Visit all day long and share what is in your cup, see what others are drinking and of course...talk tea!!!

Remember, all are welcome, so whether you are new to TEA or TeaChat, you are welcome here. This is a great place to get to know other TeaChatters, and we can also get to know you as well!

Today's TeaPoll topic is a trip down everyone's memory lane! Your break through TEA, the one that made you realize you were a TeaDrinker. You may have had TEA before that, but you were not hooked til you tried this one. So, answer the Poll, and share details about your break through TEA. What was it, does it have a special name, where did you get it, when? Anything else you can think of.

This sounds like a fun topic and I hope everyone shares their memories with everyone else!

I was about 13 years old and taking a trip with my parents in Europe. We were in London and staying at a hotel that had the little coffee maker in the room. Instead of coffee, they had teabags. On a whim, I decided to brew some up and added some cream and sugar. I went through both teabags that were layed out and told my folks how much I liked it.

It was an on and off journey from there. When I left for college years later, my mom gave me an electric kettle and a box of different bagged teas and I used them up and pretty much stuck with it after that.

I've always been somewhat of a coffee connoisseur also but that has dwindled down to almost nothing right now.

My first real cup of tea (e.g., not from a Lipton tea bag) was from an Asian restaurant years ago. I loved it! However, it's taken me until now to get really into drinking tea. I drink primarily green, as well as some white, roobios (not really tea) and herbal tisanes.

First "real" tea? Black, for certain. Sometime during high school or college (we won't discuss how long ago that was!) I encountered Bigelow Constant Comment. It was the first "real" tea other than Lipton I had tasted and I fell in love with it. It carried me through college - I think I even had a tin of loose Constant Comment and a teaball!

Thank goodness I've progressed far beyond that!

This morning started with a cup of Ginger Lime Rooibos from my favorite local teaseller. I love love love the flavor of this tisane and it goes down easy when my tummy is a bit sensitive. It's also reputed to be good for allergies - which are raging here in Texas right now (oak pollen...)

UPS will be delivering my first gaiwan this afternoon; I'll probably christen it with something out of a chinese green tea sampler I got from ArborTeas.com, or possibly some Adagio Ti Kuan Yin. Not sure yet what lies between now and then...

For me, it was oolong. While I had entered a kick where I was drinking from teabags shortly beforehand, I didn't really don't think I was a "true" tea drinker in hindsight. I guess what I mean is that the experience of drinking tea for me in that period wasn't as meaningful to me as my tea preferences and habits presently.
I shopped mainly at englishteastore.com for my bagged teas. What got me interested in bagged teas, I have no clue...it was probably my natural curiosity of other cultures and their practices (though obviously this endeavor was a bit weak at first, being with bagged teas and all). I had been hesitant to get into loose tea since it seemed so esoteric to me at the time...dunno why. Then on a whim I ordered a few sample sets from Specialteas, was blown away by the oolongs more than anything else, and the rest is history. I think this all has been within a span of a couple years.

I've always known I was a tea lover, but after a friend had given me dragonwell I was really "wowed" at the quality difference. From that point on I was tea- Obsessed. So despite the fact that Oolong is the love of my life it was a green that made me curious and enlightened me.

My breakthrough TEA - Oolong of course as you all probably know.
I have been drinking blacks all my life, and still enjoy them. Growing up, I never knew there was anything else. But oh things changed when I first tasted oolong.

Well according to my mum I've been drinking tea since I was about 3 and by the sounds of it is was pretty serious It's a bit of an embarrassing story but apparently every morning I used to wake up at the crack of dawn and shout 'Tup of tea, Tup of tea' until my mum would wake up and make me a very weak, very cool cup in my tippy cup

In England because tea is almost a staple part of the diet I guess I have always considered myself a tea drinker... but in terms of a proper lose leaf drinker it was about a year ago when I started drinking the nice Chinese green blend they serve down at my favourite noodle bar.

No tea as of yet, but I plan to finish my Yutaka Midori sencha off later. Got some sencha Miyabi on its way from O-cha, can't wait for that to arrive!

Truthfully? The tea that dumped me into the world of "tea drinker" is RoT Moroccan Mint. I had tea before that, and even loose tea, but I still wasn't a tea drinker. I even remember buying the RoT can at lunch one day. I was at a local market and was looking over the tea section. I had already had a tin of the Mango Ceylon and a few other of the RoT bags and I thought they were ok, but they hadn't really hooked me; I was still a soda drinker who drank tea sometimes. I thought the MM looked good so I picked that up and broke out my French press at lunch. Wow, that did it. Over the next few years I developed into a full blown tea drinker. I have dropped my soda consumption to 1 or 2 a week. That took a long time. There were still times when I just really wanted a soda. It has actually only been this winter that I have cut out the sodas almost completely. I didn't even really notice I was doing it until last month.

As for my poll answer, I used the "other" category. I don't exactly consider MM green, and I am really not a huge fan of the greens I have had.

Tea in my cup this morning? None, it is gone, but it was cocomint green. Off to make more tea!